


In the Darkness I Will Meet My Creators

by pentaghastly



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU- Game of Thrones, Cousin Incest, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Queen Sansa, Roughness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:18:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is not a kind monarch. She does not close wounds with kisses, nor does she pray that the fallen might rise again. Prayers are for the weak, for those who cannot provide for themselves, and although the heart tree still grows not far out of reach, the melodic young voice whispering her name haunting her steps evermore, she casts the Old Gods out of her life as she had the New so long ago. They did not save her father, or her mother, or her brothers, and they shall not save her.</p><p>Sansa is not a kind monarch, but she is loved. In a world where fear still runs rampant, where a dragon sits on the Iron Throne and a wall the size of the sky has fallen, she provides the promise of sanctuary along with vengeance. Of restoration along with bloodshed.</p><p>She heals, and then she slaughters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Darkness I Will Meet My Creators

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song "Smother" by Daughter, a beautiful piece of music I think everyone should go listen to right now. 
> 
> Can you catch the Doctor Who reference in the story? Infinite points of love if you can!

As a little lady in her kingdom of stone, Sansa Stark had thought herself a creator.

Her hands were small and delicate, unmarred unlike those of her sister and brothers, porcelain tools of restoration. She had believed that with soft touches and warm smiles she could make the world a better place; that a gentle kiss could close a gash and whispered prayers could attach a father's head back to it's missing neck.

She was born for motherhood, for motherhood was creation to it's very essence. She had been placed on the planet to _make_ , to repair and recover and restore. Fool dreams, but dreams none the less - Arya would laugh and Robb would roll his eyes and Jon would remain silent but judging, _always_ judging, and she would think that they were all to be proven wrong one day soon, so soon she could taste it on the tip of her tongue, sweet as a lemon cake, soft as a summer breeze.

As a little lady in a kingdom of crumbling rock, of cold weather and dirty men and unrefined company, Sansa Stark had thought herself a Queen.

She had, as she later found she often would, thought wrong.

In the years past her healing hands have grown hard as rocks, harder than Arya's, harder than Jon's, harder than Robb's, pale flesh pulled tight over rough bone. She is all sharp lines and hard angles, no longer carrying the aura of peace that had brought her such pride in her youth. Her skin is not porcelain, nor ivory, nor steel - she is made of ice, they say as she walks past, frozen from the inside out, but she pays them no mind.

For who is she to condemn the truth?

She is not a kind monarch. She does not close wounds with kisses, nor does she pray that the fallen might rise again. Prayers are for the weak, for those who cannot look after themselves, and although the heart tree still grows not far out of reach, the melodic young voice whispering her name haunting her steps evermore, she casts the Old Gods out of her life as she had the New so long ago. They did not save her father, or her mother, or her brothers, and they shall not save her.

Sansa is not a kind monarch, but she is loved. In a world where fear still runs rampant, where a dragon sits on the Iron Throne and a wall the size of the sky has fallen, she provides the promise of sanctuary along with vengeance. Of restoration along with bloodshed.

She heals, and then she slaughters.

 _War makes monsters of us all,_ and she is no less than one now. In her youth she had thought herself a creator - now as she rests upon her throne of iron, she thinks must be the opposite.

 _Suffocater, beast, destroyer, wolf_.

\--

To her side is her Knight Commander of the Queensguard; _always_ at her side, those sharp gray eyes, and for everything she lost she thinks the presence of her sister might almost make up for it. Almost. Next to Arya sits her paramour the Smith, and although they cannot marry Sansa does not condemn their happiness - she has grown crueler, she has learned to crush a flower the minute it blooms too bright, but this small shred of normalcy in her sister's life she cannot think to take away, not now, not yet.

The Maid of Tarth sits to her far right; she has more than proven her worth, the closes ally to Sansa that remains alive. And next to her an empty seat for Jaime Lannister, _The Queensaver,_ and she would laugh at the absurdity of it all were his death not fresh in her heart.

 _His death was not in vein,_ she chastises the childish part of herself for the tears that prick at the backs of her eyes, _For the little brother slayed the evil queen, and in doing so he brought you home._ But her thoughts to not help, so she shifts her gaze from the place of honor where her knight should be seated as quickly as she can tear her eyes away.

Directly to her right sits Jon Targaryen, and as the feast of the anniversary of her rule rages on she claps his hand in a desperate hold.

"They will whisper," he reminds her, voice stern but not angry, and so she pays him no mind. She is a Queen, and a Queen can do as she will - a Queen can hold onto her cousin as her lifeline, in a moment of weakness and fear, and if she wishes she can never let him go.

"Then allow them to," she snaps in reply, although her lips curl into a small smile. "They are smallfolk; they whisper about the affairs of cattle as much as men." A pause to collect herself before she leans towards him, her words tight in her throat as if it is a difficulty to think them, no less force them out. "How long until it is appropriate for me to retire to my chambers? I grow weary of these...celebrations."

_Not celebrations, though. Excuses - an excuse to drink and forget what has happened the torture, forget the blight that bloodied their land and cut their population in half._

_Not celebrations, but a mockery._

"I hate it to," he assures her, voice so quiet she has to strain her ears to hear it. "But we must be strong, Sansa. If they cannot be, then we must be for them."

She could run. Right then and there, she could run away. Not without him, of course - she would drag him with her to the ends of Westros, to the Free Cities, to Dorne, to wherever she wish, and he would follow her, perhaps with complaint but never with second thought. They could leave this condemned farce of a kingdom, leave the people to squabble and fight and murder and thieve to their heart's content, and they could do it without a second thought.

For a moment inbetween the band's songs she considers it. And then the sweet notes a ballad written for her Lady Mother, and she stays her anxious legs.

"I am the Queen in the North," she whispers, wishing he would not catch her words and hoping he might all at once. "And I am afraid."

His hand is squeezing hers back and she knows he has heard her - he always does.

\--

Her parents chambers have remained untouched since her youth; somehow throughout the entire siege of Winterfell it is the only room that remained in tact, and had she still believed in the gods she would think it a miracle. But rather she accounts it as a lucky stroke of fate, one of the few she can remember having in all her years.

"They would be pleased to see you have kept it the same," Jon speaks as if reading her thoughts, and she glances at his silhouette in the doorway just behind her. Escorting her from the feast - always the gentleman, her cousin. "Lady Stark always did love those furs, I remember."

"They are dead," she reminds him, voice soft but reprimanding, "They cannot be pleased by anything."

Silence falls echoes over the room as he takes a step inside - without her permission, she notes, but he rarely needs that for anything when it comes to her.

For a moment, she wonders if he might realize why.

"Have you ever wondered why I trust you so?" she asks him rather suddenly, not surprised when he stops his ascent towards her in his tracks. "Why you and not Arya, for example? She _is_ my sister, and you are just my cousin - one I was never particularly close with at that. Do you ever wonder?" Because Sansa used to, long ago, until the plainness of it all came to her in startling clarity.

"Yes," he replies, confusing coating his words, and although she knows he cannot see her she smiles all the same.

"Because the moment I saw you I thought you were him. My Lord Father," she allows for the clarification, unsure he fully catches the meaning behind her words. "And I despised you for it. I loved my father, but he was a _fool_ ; he put honor ahead of survival, ahead of Arya and Robb and Bran and Rickon and you and my mother and myself, and he died. He _died_ , Jon, and when I saw you so similar to him I thought that, if given the chance, you might do the same.

And yet here you are, putting me before yourself daily, putting my life ahead of yours, my happiness, my prosperity, my rule - and that is something that has never been done for me before. Not in Kings Landing, not here, not ever. And I shall be grateful to you for it every day for the rest of my life, and I shall love you for it every day after."

Tension is thick, but that is not what crushes her. It's the silence, usually so comfortable between them, that has perverted itself into something alien, something terrifyingly new and _not right_. She simply prays that new, this one time, might bring good to them rather than bad.

( _Good and bad_ \- ignorant words that she had struck from her vocabulary long ago, for nothing is as simple as _good and bad_ , but this is what she is reduced to in her worry. A child in a world where rejection is a fate worse than death).

"I have found that you are the one thing my touch does not taint, Jon Targaryen, and that is a gift I will not let go of, not if anyone asked, not even if _you asked_ it."

"I would not." His reply is sharp, immediate, and were she still capable of the emotion it might take her by surprise. "Ask it. I would never ask it, nor would I wish it. You and Arya, you are all that's left. And Arya is lovely but you...have _you_ ever wondered why I trust you so?"

Sansa does not give him an answer, and he does not wait for one. The fact that she remains rooted in place is answer enough.

"When I first laid eyes upon you after ther war, all I could see was your mother. Lady Catelyn Stark and her daughter Sansa, one in the same; the same pride, the same virtues, and, as I expected, the same disdain for me. And you _disgusted_ me, but we are blood and I stood by your side without question.

"And in your rule I watched in awe - not at your growth, for I think if you were to change any more I would not recognize you at all. But in what you had already become; your strength unwavering, your sharp tongue, your firm stance. I watched as you ruled over subjects who worshiped at your feet, and I watched as you saved their lives. You might not think you did, might not even be aware of it, but you saved us all.

"I trust you implicitly because you are not your mother. You are not Robb, or Arya, or Bran or Rickon. But you are yourself, and were you anyone but we would all be doomed, me more so than anyone. You are all that remains to me."

And with his last words his lips are upon hers, harsh and demanding with an underlying softness that she could not have predicted, and for the first time in her recent memory Sansa Stark finds herself taken aback.

The problem isn't that she is unsure of what to do - many an eve with her golden knight had taught her the things a lady could do to please a man, the ways she could make him write beneath her, make him whisper her name like a prayer. But the problem is that it is all happening far too fast; with the simple touch of his lips to hers she is an anxious maiden awaiting the love of her life, and he is a young foolish boy, fumbling with ties and gnashing his teeth against her own.

It is not the love making they sing songs about. There are no words of adoration or affection, no gentle kisses on his scars or hushed words like desperate prayers.

But there are teeth and sharp edges and claws, there is the scratch of his stubble against her cheek, the sting of her nails driven into his back, the guttural cry of a woman in equal parts torment and insurmountable pleasure. It is not the love making that creates, but the kind that destroys, the objective of which is not to love but to punish and reward all in one.

She would thank the gods, but even in something as perfect as this they remain absent. So she thanks him instead, thanks him in breathy moans and nicks of her teeth and scratches from her claws, and thinks that if this is the taste of destruction she would not live any other way.


End file.
